Triathlete Jay Lehr, 79, has followed a low-carb, high-fat diet his entire life.

Dr. Jay Lehr is a 79-year-old Ironman triathlete and physician who credits a low-carb, high-fat ketogenic-style Paleo diet for his incredible health.

Lehr, science director at the Heartland Institute in Chicago, has bucked conventional diet wisdom for most of his life and followed a low-carb, high-fat diet and has rarely been sick.

“I’ve never been inside a regular doctor’s office,” Jay told the High Plains Journal. “I have lived my entire life on high fat — dairy, eggs, butter and lard — which, as you all know has not been the recommended diet for the last 50 years.”

Lehr said the idea that saturated fat was unhealthy and caused heart attacks began in the mid-1950s, shortly after President Dwight Eisenhower had a heart attack.

Eisenhower’s famously doctors put him on a low-fat diet following a controversial study by nutrition professor Ancel Keys touting the purported health benefits of a low-fat diet.

Since then, the U.S. government has continued to promote a low-fat diet to treat heart disease and obesity despite scientific evidence showing no link between unprocessed saturated fat and heart attacks.

Lehr, a Princeton University alum with a Ph.D. in hydrology, said it’s time for the public to embrace the health benefits of low-carb, high-fat diets such as the ketogenic, Paleo and Atkins diets.

The low-carb Paleo and ketogenic diets can improve performance for triathletes and other endurance athletes.

Jay, a 13-time Ironman triathlete, said he personally has thrived on a diet of red meat, saturated fat, dairy, eggs, butter, and lard.

In her bestselling book, The Big Fat Surprise, investigative journalist Nina Teicholz says the true cause of obesity, cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol and diabetes is a high-carb diet, especially one high in sugar.

“Fat generally — and saturated fat specifically — came to be blamed for causing heart disease, obesity and cancer,” Teicholz said in an interview with obesity expert Dr. Frank Lipman, author of Revive.

“Eventually this unfounded belief became ingrained as our national dogma. Saturated fat is really not bad for health. The most rigorous diet trials clearly show that a high-fat, low-carb diet is better for fighting obesity, diabetes and heart disease.”

Nina drew her conclusions after conducting a nine-year investigation. She said the longstanding belief that saturated fat is unhealthy stemmed from flawed scientific research, namely from the Seven Countries Study conducted by vegetarian scientist Ancel Keys.

In 1958, Keys proclaimed that a high-fat diet caused cardiovascular disease after concluding that the nations with the highest rates of heart disease consumed the most fat.

Later analysis revealed that Keys had cherry-picked his data, leaving out countries where people ate a high-fat diet but did not have heart disease, as well as countries where heart disease was high despite a low-fat diet.

But a sea-change is afoot, as more medical experts reject the low-fat diet dogma promoted by Conventional Wisdom and underscore the health benefits of low-carb, high-fat diets such the ketogenic and Atkins diets.

LCHF Diets Promote Weight Loss and Prevent Cancer

Dr. Jeff Volek, a professor at the University of Connecticut, is a pioneer in the low-carb, high-fat diet movement who said a LCHF diet promotes optimal health, for both elite athletes and the average sedentary individual.

Ariana Omipi of New Zealand said her 110-pound weight loss in 7 months was due to a low-carb ketogenic diet.

By drastically reducing carbs in our diet and replacing them with healthy, unprocessed fats, Dr. Volek said we accelerate weight loss, boost fat-burning, experience more stable blood sugar levels, and ward off degenerative conditions such as heart disease, obesity, dementia, and diabetes.

Because dietary fat has a negligible impact on insulin, it doesn’t produce surges in our blood glucose and insulin the way carbs do. More importantly, unprocessed fat does not fuel inflammation, which causes aging and leads to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and even cancer.

While the idea of consuming more dietary fat may sound shocking given the low-fat diet mantra that has dominated SAD (the Standard American Diet), Dr. Volek said we actually evolved to thrive on a low-carb, high-fat diet.

Eating more healthy fats and fewer carbs also has neuroprotective benefits, said neurologist Dr. David Perlmutter, author of Grain Brain. According to Perlmutter, we can prevent — and even reverse — dementia, ADHD and Alzheimer’s disease by following a low-carb, gluten-free Paleo diet.

“The idea that people are nutritionally deprived because they don’t eat grain has no scientific basis,” he told me.

“Carbs are devastating for the brain. ‘Grain Brain’ closely resembles the Paleo diet, which mimics our ancestors’ eating habits and is comprised of foods people have eaten for two million years – mainly plants, fruits and meat.”

Teicholz, a former vegetarian, has seen the positive impact a low-carb, high fat diet has had on her own health. She said she struggled to lose weight on low-fat diets, but was able to shed 10 pounds without exercise simply by increasing her consumption of healthy fats and reducing her carb intake.

Nina echoed the sentiments of science journalist Gary Taubes, who argued that fat has been wrongly blamed for obesity and other diseases for the past 40 years. Taubes detailed the research in his bestseller, Why We Get Fat.

With new reports confirming that unprocessed saturated fat is good for you, Dr. Volek is confident more people will embrace the low-carb, high-fat eating plan and seize control of their health through diet.

“It’s an exciting time,” said Dr. Volek, co-author of A New Atkins For a New You. “There’s a lot of momentum. I think the pendulum is swinging in the right direction.”